Ultrananomicrobrewing?

[seravitae]

Hi guys,

I love brewing but I don't drink a lot. I would prefer to do many small batches of different sorts. I have the equip for all-grain mashing and am thinking of doing very small batches. Ultimately any one "batch" I would like to fill a 2L PET bottle for fermentation. Maybe two. Does anyone here do this small-amount and/or many-batch-at-once brewing? I think my style of brewing may be to have like 10 or 20 2L bottles with airlocks secured through the lids, all producing different flavours. If i find a bottle that takes my fancy especially, i can always scale up into my 30/60L fermentors.



So, i was just wondering how i might calculate what amount of grain(s) I would use for a very small batch. Can i just take a tried & tested recepie and scale it down proportionally? Or is there some other thing I need to consider?

Cheers.

 

[Adamt]

Scaling down the recipe linearly should be fine. The main issues I can envisage are with yeast handling; unless you have a big yeast bank and can produce small starters, you may have trouble achieving consistency due to under or over pitching.

 

[caleb]

Well there's no reason in theory that this wouldn't work.

Many people use a small bottle to make a yeast starter. Also, in the planted aquarium world, it's common to ferment a sugar water brew in a soft drink bottle just to pump the CO2 into the tank to supply the plants with.

Just remember you need to leave a bit of headroom on the top for your yeast to froth up, so maybe don't fill more than 2/3 full. (3 L Coke bottles, anyone?)

I guess bottling such a brew once fermentation has completed will be pretty easy!

Just scale everything down by % accordingly, and it should work fine. i.e. A 2 litre batch will need exactly 1/10 the malt and hops of a 20 litre batch. You could be a bit more generous with yeast though - I don't see pitching 1 gram of dried yeast as the best way to go. Maybe use 2-6 grams of yeast.

 

[kook]

Theres a couple guys on here before who've brewed 4 or 4.5L batches with 5L demijohns. Still produces great beers, though boiloff is massive.

Just scale everything down by % accordingly, and it should work fine. i.e. A 2 litre batch will need exactly 1/10 the malt and hops of a 20 litre batch.

Wouldn't the hop utilisation vary?

 

[Adamt]

Depends on what you boil in...?

 

[Sammus]

This is pretty cool.

Femto-brew.

 

[Wolfy]

I'd suggest that using 5l demijohns would provide a nice balance between small scale and easily reproducible results, with very small batches I'd imagine there could be a significant amount of variation even when using 'identical' ingredients since the sample size is so small (how do you use/measure 1/20th of a finnings tab for example). With only 2l batches you'd only be able fill 2-3 bottles and there would be no real way to test/age/evaluate your brews. At least with a 5l batch it would be worth the effort in regards to brewing time/effort/losses and you'd also be able to age/test/sample your beer much more easily - besides it's really the same as using 2x2l bottles, except I'd imagine its much easier to plan and implement.

 

[caleb]

This is pretty cool.

Femto-brew.

Beyond cool. Looks like I have the equipment needed to go all-grain after all.

 

[seravitae]

Wow, you guys are awesome. I didnt expect so many comments on a thursday night!

I will have a brainstorm at PET vs demijohns. They are quite expensive, though the quality might be better. Also 2L may be too small. Maybe I will try both and see how they go? Im just glad to know it is possible.



Also with regards to issues about how much finings and hops to add for such a small batch, I happen to own some extremely sensetive scales i got off ebay for measuring out nutrients in some other washes. They should be fine, but who knows, I guess I will report my findings soon enough?



Thanks again!

 

[mika]

Given such small batch sizes I would imagine small variances in ingredients, hops and grain, such as encountere when weighing them, is going to result in a lot of variability.

 

[Doogiechap]

I seem to recall Thirstyboy mashing a batch in a coffee plunger :lol: .

 

[Sammus]

This is pretty cool.

Femto-brew.

I seem to recall Thirstyboy mashing a batch in a coffee plunger :lol: .

Beat ya With a link too!

 

[afromaiko]

Get some Oztops too, you can use them as an airlock on your mini juice or PET bottle fermenter. Bonus is that they'll carbonate at the same time, so once primary has finished all you need to do is chill and drink.

 

[drsmurto]

The smaller the batch the more difficult it becomes to keep the mash temp constant due to a much smaller thermal mash.

I have tried in the past to mash in 1 of those little six can eskys and lost 7C over an hour :blink:

i think it would be better to do the mash in a pot on the stove that you can occasionally add some heat...

other than that it would be a great way of trialling a wide array of malts/hops/yeasts/styles without having to make 20+L.

 

[afromaiko]

Would a crock pot with Mashmate (or similar) be feasible?

 

[Guest Lurker]

i think it would be better to do the mash in a pot on the stove that you can occasionally add some heat...

When I used to do small mashes I found rather than on the stove, leaving the pot in the oven set at around 70 deg did a better job.

 

[Ronin]

Cant' remember exactly, but was there a podcast about brewing a six pack's volume of beer.

I don't think it was the Jamil Show, maybe one of the basic brewing radio shows.

I'll see if I can find it.

James

Edit: Okay found it...it's called "a six pack of IPA", the 1/12/06 episode. Might have some useful information for you

 

[phonos]

I will have a brainstorm at PET vs demijohns. They are quite expensive, though the quality might be better. Also 2L may be too small. Maybe I will try both and see how they go? Im just glad to know it is possible.

Rather than use a glass demijohn you could just use a 5L spring water bottle. The water can also be used for your first brew...

If you wanted to go glass though, I saw some 5L wine bottles at Dan Murphies the other day for about $20... Free cooking wine with your demijohn...

 

[unterberg]

I think its a good idea to do smaller batches if you wanna try around.

I reckon ideally you would have a hotplate with a magentic stirrer.
Thereby you can set the temp as well. But they are expensive new. Might find something used somewhere or in the lab somewhere or make one yourself if you feel DIY like they did here.
I dont have any tools so I cant do that... would have to borrow the lab one

 

[Thirsty Boy]

You only need to keep your mash warm for an hour... so temp control etc in a small batch is a bit of overkill.

Using just a normal kitchen pot of the right size for your brew...

put the oven on low to get it all well pre-heated - heat your mash water - mash in and stir - take your temp and adjust on the stovetop as required - wrap pot up in a nice bathtowel - turn the oven off and stick the pot/towel in there - come back in an hour

If your oven is good enough to have a temp setting of 70.. then do that instead as Guest Lurker suggests. Mine is a piece of crap so just getting it warm does the trick. Wrapped up in a towel, you might lose a few degrees over the hour... sitting in a warm oven... probably none at all.

When I did the coffee plunger brew.. it was just wrapped in a towel, and it only lost about 3 degrees over the hour.

Tiny brew in the bag is the easiest I think. For a 4L batch a standard pasta pot would be plenty big enough, and you dont have to worry about sparging, colanders, another pot etc etc... just a calico shopping bag would be good enough for the bag, no worries about the strength of the bag at that scale - or muslin, or voile, or a pillow case (I say go the pillow case) or nearly anything similar.

Given you have a bit of grain and the ability to crush it (a blender is fine for BIAB brews) plus the other ingredients, then I strongly suspect that pretty much anybody has the equipment in their kitchen right now.. to do a 4-8L batch of All Grain beer.

Those springwater containers from office water dispensers are 15L and make fine fermentors for 10-12L batches.

Or you could build a HERMS .... my first brewery was a HERMS designed for 10-12L batches, no reason you couldn't go smaller